Consumer confidence shows "pervasive pessimism"

Driving the news: The Conference Board's long-running consumer confidence survey fell for the fifth straight month, and consumers' expectations for the future fell to a 13-year low — worse even than in the depths of the pandemic.

• Separately, the Labor Department released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover data for March, which painted a benign picture of the job outlook. Hiring was slightly up and layoffs were down, compared to February.
• The number of job openings did fall by 288,000 in March, however, which could be an early warning of a pullback by employers. (But also could be statistical noise in a volatile data series.)

What they're saying: Americans' expectations for business conditions, job prospects, and future income all fell, Conference Board senior economist Stephanie Guichard said in a release, reflecting "pervasive pessimism about the future."

• "Notably, the share of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months (32.1%) was nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession," she wrote.

• "In addition, expectations about future income prospects turned clearly negative for the first time in five years, suggesting that concerns about the economy have now spread to consumers worrying about their own personal situations."
• The average respondent expected inflation of 7% over the next 12 months, the highest since the post-pandemic surge of 2022.